As China grows wealthier, the nation’s banks are looking to lock in more of the expanding pool of high-end customers. One of the targeted groups is families with enough cash on hand to consider a college education abroad for their kids. Bank of Communications, China’s fifth largest bank by assets, is one of those banks and it is hoping it has found a way to get to the front of the class.

Abrams

It has teamed up with the Economist Intelligence Unit to create a guide for anxious parents looking for the right university for their son or daughter, rating key cities around the world not only for their educational standards but also on a range of other factors – like future employment prospects — to assess educational “bang for the buck.”

The bank and the EIU have put together a rating system which they call the “Sea Turtle Index” – a play on the mandarin Chinese word haigui, which means “returning from overseas” but also sounds like the word for “sea turtle.” Read More »

• Chinese stocks fell Thursday. The Shanghai Composite closed down 2.1% at 3,356.33, following the release of the central bank’s quarterly monetary-policy report, which restated its easy-credit stance but left the door open to “fine-tuning with market tools.”

• A Hong Kong court froze the assets of GOME founder Huang Guangyu upon the request of the city’s securities regulator. Huang was detained by police in mainland China last fall for alleged economic crimes, though no specific charges have been brought against him.

• Prosecutors in Guangzhou are alleging that Wang Sheng, former chairman of property developer Canton Properties, received 4.8 billion yuan (around $700 million) in illegal loans from the state-controlled Bank of Communications, in what would be China’s biggest case of bank fraud to date. Read More »

Expert Insight

New rules on labor negotiations in southern China offer a potential solution to the country's growing problem with labor unrest while at the same time illustrating the difficulty the Communist Party faces in effectively addressing workers’ grievances.

For much of the last half-century, changing China through economic reform seemed to make far better sense than transforming the country through political revolution. Xi Jinping is trying to flip that on its head.

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